An exhibition of portraits By Alexander Moffat entitled 'Hugh MacDIarmid and the Company He Kept" was shown in the Town Hall Gallery, Langholm from August 18 to September 14. The exhibition celebrates the 120th anniversary of MacDiarmid's birth and will travel to the Corn Exchange Gallery in Biggar where MacDiarmid spent the final thirty years of his life, next month.

Norman MacCaig pastel on paper 1980

The exhibition comprises portraits of a range of MacDiarmid's friends and fellow poets -
from Norman MacCaig, Robert Garioch, Sorley MacLean and George MacKay Brown to the
composer Ronald Stevenson, the actor Tom Fleming, the philosopher George Elder Davie,
Alan Bold, poet and MacDiarmid's biographer, and the journalist Neal Ascherson.

Alan Bold charcoal on paper 1969

Also included are letters from MacDiarmid to Moffat and photographs of Moffat and his students at Glasgow School of Art painting a mural for an auction in the Third Eye Centre in 1981 to raise funds for the MacDIarmid memorial sculpture.